WotC: 'We made a mistake when we said an image not AI'

It seems like AI art is going to be a recurring news theme this year. While this is Magic: the Gathering news rather than D&D or TTRPG news, WotC and AI art has been a hot topic a few times recently.

When MtG community members observed that a promotional image looked like it was made with AI, WotC denied that was the case, saying in a now-deleted tweet "We understand confusion by fans given the style being different than card art, but we stand by our previous statement. This art was created by humans and not AI."

However, they have just reversed their position and admitted that the art was, indeed, made with the help of AI tools.

Well, we made a mistake earlier when we said that a marketing image we posted was not created using AI. Read on for more.

As you, our diligent community pointed out, it looks like some AI components that are now popping up in industry standard tools like Photoshop crept into our marketing creative, even if a human did the work to create the overall image.

While the art came from a vendor, it’s on us to make sure that we are living up to our promise to support the amazing human ingenuity that makes Magic great.

We already made clear that we require artists, writers, and creatives contributing to the Magic TCG to refrain from using AI generative tools to create final Magic products.

Now we’re evaluating how we work with vendors on creative beyond our products – like these marketing images – to make sure that we are living up to those values.

This comes shortly after a different controversy when a YouTube accused them (falsely in this case) of using AI on a D&D promotional image, after which WotC reiterated that "We require artists, writers, and creatives contributing to the D&D TTRPG to refrain from using AI generative tools to create final D&D products."

The AI art tool Midjourney is being sued in California right now by three Magic: The Gathering artists who determined that theirs and nearly 6,000 other artists' work had been scraped without permission. That case is ongoing.

Various tools and online platforms are now incorporating AI into their processes. AI options are appearing on stock art sites like Shutterstock, and creative design platforms like Canva are now offering AI. Moreover, tools within applications like Photoshop are starting to draw on AI, with the software intelligently filling spaces where objects are removed and so on. As time goes on, AI is going to creep into more and more of the creative processes used by artists, writers, and video-makers.

 

[Scribe]

Whether he knew he couldn’t stop the waves or didn’t know… either way he couldn’t stop the waves.

Right, because he was a man, and the waves are (in his world/the story) the provenance of God.

Meanwhile, the only 'God' in this scenario is greed and massive sums of money.

Companies dont invest massive sums of money out of the kindness of their hearts and a burning desire to help their fellow man lol.

So yes, we cannot hold back the tide, because the tide is the billionaires and massive IT corporations which run the world. Fantastic.

 

[Gradine]

Absolutely no offense intended, but as a (former freelance & currently active) visual artist, and the current art director for my project, I would not accept art that is what I would consider unfinished.

Missing fingers, mismatched proportions, mismatched eyes, poor composition, all of these are going to be rejected by me for a final project.

If I am paying another freelance artist, I lay out my expectations clear as day from the beginning. Especially with ai generated images being more prevalent, I will not accept art that I commissioned that has missing fingers or other indications that it may have been made using ai tools.

It is both easy and worthwhile to target AI "art" for the things it does incredibly poorly; faces and hands tend to be the most common "gotchas", as well any kind of written text. But the problems go deeper: you mention the proportions and composition, of course, which goes into AI's inability to understand depth of field and... well... yeah, composition. But the problems go deeper still. And here I'm not even touching on the thornier ethical issues concerning "training data" or artists losing work, which are also both incredibly important.

this treads close to "what is art"

It's worth answering. What is art? There's no good specific answer to that, and anybody who tells you there is is almost certainly selling you something. But I think, even with all the back and forth and gatekeeping, there's a basis for a definition that anybody with actual academic or philosophical interest in the subject can agree upon: it's that it's a human activity. It's an act of expression, of creativity, of imagination. AI is incapable of any of those things, and will always be incapable of those things. All of those technical problems with AI "art"? The depth of field, the composition, proportionality, frakking fingers, eventually, and probably sometime soon, AI will probably get better at all of those things. But I doubt we'll reach a point where, beyond some basic imagery, we'll stop being able to tell human art and AI "art" apart, because the AI's output will always be lacking in express. It will always lack soul. And thus, what AI produces is not art at all; subpar or otherwise.

Can it produce images? Sure. Can those images contain aesthetic quality? Sure. Is AI capable of aesthetic quality with dubious "training" on actual human artistic endeavors? Probably not.

I'd trust AI prompts to create clipart. Icons, even. But I would trust it to create artwork, because it can't actually do that.

 

[QuentinGeorge]

Whether he knew he couldn’t stop the waves or didn’t know… either way he couldn’t stop the waves.

The story isn't about the waves, it's about being honest with your leader even when you think he won't like what you tell him.

Regardless, AI-generated art isn't a natural phenomenon.

 

[TheSword]

Right, because he was a man, and the waves are (in his world/the story) the provenance of God.

Meanwhile, the only 'God' in this scenario is greed and massive sums of money.

Companies dont invest massive sums of money out of the kindness of their hearts and a burning desire to help their fellow man lol.

So yes, we cannot hold back the tide, because the tide is the billionaires and massive IT corporations which run the world. Fantastic.

Well I’ll let you work out who the courtiers are in the analogy.

The tide is also the internet, computers, the telephone and recorded music

You can’t stop Technological advancement when it makes things easier. This case is just another example of how futile it is to try and ban something that will soon become ubiquitous.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

Anyway, apparently OpenAI said it would be 'impossible' to train if not able to use copyrighted materials.

I'm sure the billionaires wept.

It's possible, but when trying to lobby for a law in your favour, it's better to say that something would become impossible, rather than say that it is costing less.

 

[QuentinGeorge]

Cool, that will just mean your overhead and the cost of everything will always be more, automation revolutionized the industry, same with robotics and computers. I am just saying graphic design and other jobs will be first and will slowly overtake even more complex and detailed artistic positions in the world. But there will be holdouts and those who prefer to do it the old way, just like there are still bookbinders and those who make their paper.

But it's not a good analogy. Most automated work is done because it saves labour, and the machine can do the task without us. But AI-generated art literally cannot function without a training dataset. It is dependent on the creative output of humans which it then mindlessly copies. It's literally like a robot JJ Abrams.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

Meanwhile, the only 'God' in this scenario is greed and massive sums of money.

Companies dont invest massive sums of money out of the kindness of their hearts and a burning desire to help their fellow man lol.

There is also a large involvement of academia and public sector investment. Whether you think that public institutions work for the greater good or not is a P-topic and can't be discussed here.

 

[QuentinGeorge]

Well I’ll let you work out who the courtiers are in the analogy.

The tide is also the internet, computers, the telephone and recorded music

You can’t stop Technological advancement when it makes things easier. This case is just another example of how futile it is to try and ban something that will soon become ubiquitous.

Who's talking about banning? Make them pay the proper amount for the data they are using without authorization and the problem fixes itself. (ie the market sets the appropriate cost)

 

[Scribe]

Well I’ll let you work out who the courtiers are in the analogy.

It's a flawed analogy.

Tide = AI.
God = Corporations and Billionaire Class.
King = Those saying it's impossible.
Courtiers = Those saying that it is possible.

The irony being, it could be stopped, because it's not some higher power in control. It's just us, people.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

Who's talking about banning? Make them pay the proper amount for the data they are using without authorization and the problem fixes itself. (ie the market sets the appropriate cost)

Sure, like Adobe did. But then, what's the problem with the example by WotC? They mention specifically that no-AI policy is made more difficult to enforce with its integration into Photoshop, but if the opposition to AI is only linked to the legality of the acquisition of data, there should be no problem in keeping the "contested" pieces? I think there are two distinct things: first, there is the transient problem of the uncertain legality of datamining over the Internet (transient because it will be settled by lawmakers at some point and because there will be enough public domain images to build excellent models on, or GAN will be made to train AI models on AI-generated images) and the more fundamental problem of being against AI on principles. Those two shouldn't be confused.